![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/shutterstock_1726489153-min-1024x683.jpg\")
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCredit: Sandor Szmutko, Shutterstock<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCredit: Sandor Szmutko, Shutterstock<\/p>\n
Did you know that there are a number of long-lost London rivers and waterways<\/strong> that flow beneath the streets of the city<\/a>? I won\u2019t attempt to name them all right now, don\u2019t worry. What I will do, however, is point you in the direction of one of them that isn\u2019t actually \u2018lost\u2019 at all. And that, my friends, is the River Westbourne<\/strong> \u2013 a forgotten fragment of London\u2019s past, which can actually be found, hidden in plain sight, over at Sloane Square station<\/strong>. Who\u2019d have thought it?<\/p>\n The River Westbourne was a tributary of the River Thames<\/a>. It initially started on Hampstead Heath<\/strong>, and flowed its way through the likes Hampstead<\/a>, Kilburn, Paddington<\/a>, Hyde Park<\/a>, and Knightsbridge<\/a>, before joining the Thames near Chelsea Bridge<\/strong>.<\/p>\n In 1730, a dam was built across the River Westbourne in order to create The Serpentine in Hyde Park<\/strong>. The Westbourne continued to supply water to The Serpentine for the following 100 (or so) years<\/strong>. But as the water of the river became more polluted, it got rerouted to a pipe \u2013 and The Serpentine hd to source its water from elsewhere.<\/p>\n The River Westbourne at Sloane Square station <\/p>\n When it came to constructing Sloane Square station<\/strong> in the 1860s, the River Westbourne presented itself as a bit of a challenge. But we Londoners have always loved a challenge, and \u2013 of course \u2013 a solution was found. A large iron pipe was suspended above the tracks and platform to act as a channel for the flowing water. The pipe was encased in a sturdy green culvert<\/strong> \u2013 and that exact same culvert is still perched in that exact same place today.<\/p>\n That\u2019s right, folks. This secret river still runs through Sloane Square station<\/strong> to this very day. And I bet you\u2019ve seen the green culvert in question, and never even given it a second thought. It\u2019s a resilient old thing, that\u2019s for sure. It even managed to survive the bomb blast that destroyed part of Sloane Square station during World War II<\/strong>. Pretty impressive, hey?<\/p>\n You can see the green culvert above the platforms at Sloane Square station on the District and Circle Lines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: Sandor Szmutko, Shutterstock Did you know that there are a number of long-lost London rivers and waterways…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":436726,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,393,4884,2348,17009,257,10763,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-436725","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-history","12":"tag-local-trip","13":"tag-london","14":"tag-trip-travel","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115232462169351255","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/436726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/shutterstock_1387145471-min.jpg\")
Credit: Apostolis Giontzis, Shutterstock <\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Sloane_Square_tube_station_27656386453.jpg\")
Richard Ash via Wikimedia Commons \/ CC BY-SA 2.0 <\/p>\n